What Ken Agyapong’s & Afia Schwarzeneggar’s controversy means for reforms

KEN VERSUS AFIA: THE ALLEGORY OF IDENTITY THEFT

Ken calls Afia a “prostitute.” Afia returns Ken’s verbal fire, describing him as a “pedophile” among other unprintable labels, and calling his mother a “prostitute.” Did Ken’s mother give birth to him through the holy gift of prostitution? We do not know the answer for sure. But then again did both “prostitutes,” Ken’s mother and Afia, ply their midnight trade along the same routes? Was Ken their pimp? Again, we do not know except to borrow their demeaning descriptive label of “prostitute” for our narrative convenience.

What we do rather know for certain is that Ghanaian journalism, represented by Afia’s foul bed-wetting and philandering tongue, and Ghanaian politics, symbolized by Ken’s unrefined bed-wetting psychological landscape and philandering fangs, are irrational agents of dirty journalism and dirty politics respectively. In other words, Ken’s bed-wetting mental landscape and philandering fangs give us an inkling of why the Ghanaian parliament is a non-functional and useless institution, while Afia’s unprofessionalism tells us why Ghanaian journalism is such a bogus industry.

What is more, his damning accusation that Afia had to sleep with a carpenter because she did not have money to pay him is nothing new. In fact, she may have used his exposed genitals in her bed-wetting and philandering hippo-mouth to service or pay the carpenter. Also, Afia’s equally damning assertion that Ken sleeps with little girls and refuses to pay them recalls the spates of disbursed illegal judgment-debt scandals. What sort of a country at all has Ghana become? Where are Kwesi Kyei Darkwa (KKD) and Ewuraffe Orleans-Thompson? Asamoah Gyan and Sarah Kwablah?

Are KKD and Gyan not allegedly raping these girls as our greedy and bastardized politicians have been wantonly raping the national coffers, much in the same way that the bed-wetting and philandering fangs of Ken are devouring the sacred virginity of public diplomacy, decorum, and public decency? Why will Afia assume the identities of Ewuraffe Orleans-Thompson and Sarah Kwablah? Why will that rabid Ken assume the identities of Asamoah Gyan and KKD? Are the slimy exposed genitals of Ken’s bed-wetting and philandering fangs ever going to expose the nude pictures of Akua Donkoh and whether President Mahama is adulterously involved with her?

And how is that rabid Ken going to get hold of Afia’s nude pictures? In the first place, did she send any nude pictures to that rabid Ken? Or someone else did? If so, who did? Could it have been Ibrahim Mahama? John Kufuor? Paul Afoko? Kwabena Agyapong? Sammy Crabbe? Nyaho Tamakloe? Arthur Kennedy? President Mahama? Kwadwo Mpiani? Pablo Escobar? Was Afia ever Ken’s mistress? It could be that the lingering conflict between the “Whiteman’s burden” and the “Blackman’s burden” are partly to blame for their philandering humanity, Ken and Afia, Kojo Antwi’s “Tom and Jerry.”. It appears this lingering conflict is what is probably eating up the constipated psychological entrails of these controversial irresponsible and juvenile public characters.

In the end neutralizing this seemingly lingering suit of juvenile conflicts and its negative implications for society’s acceptance of public diplomacy is long overdue for all the right and wrong reasons. No one says it better or more eloquently than Bob Marley’s “Africa Unite” and Lucky Dube’s “Together as One.”

GREAT LESSONS FOR INDUSTRY & INSTITUTIONAL PLAYERS: PARLIAMENTARY AND JOURNALISM REFORMS

This national disgrace resulting from Afia’s and Ken’s verbal bickering offers an opportunity for innovative reforms in both parliamentary and journalism politics. The national controversy which TV3 presenter Nana Aba Anamoah generated with her forged posts is a sharp reminder of what industry leaders have to do in order to bring some measure of ethical sanity into the politics of journalism. Plus, the fact that public figures like Ken and Afia will take freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of conscience to a new height of crass absurdity is deeply worrying.

Can a journalist be fair or ethical if he or she takes “soli” to cover a story? Our professional journalism schools and owners of media houses have a lot of work to do. So is the leadership of parliament! On the other hand, if this public trading of insults between Ken and Afia is a manufactured calculation meant to enhance the commercial viewership and listenership of their respective media outlets, then, we beg to differ that such publicity stunts are doing a great disservice to media diplomacy and to the responsible growth and development of Ghanaian journalism.

It turns out duopolistic partisan politics, gender bias, political ethnocentrism, rhetorical indecency, lack of decorum, and serial calling in Ghana’s mass communication make absolute nonsense of conscious attempts at adhering to the high standards of journalistic and public relations ethics. The National Media Commission (NMC) and its Chairman Kwasi Gyang-Apenteng therefore need to have come our stronger and more ethically trenchant against the two than they did recently, though we also agree the public confrontation between the two is not an isolated one. Gyang-Apenteng and the NMC may have to work harder in order to achieve a reversal of some of the major negative things befalling Ghanaian journalism.

We also wonder what the Despite Group of Companies and the management of Okay FM are doing to rein in the bed-wetting and philandering tongue of Afia. It is unfortunately ironic and even sad to acknowledge the fact that Ken is a media magnate himself, and should therefore have known better than to degrade himself and his brand the way he has done.

It is also a fact that self-demeaning is the oxygen he breaths daily.

FINAL REMARKS

Granted the preceding naratives, could Afia then have been right in calling Ken an “idiot”? Or that Ken is the reason Führer Akufo-Addo will never be president in Nkrumah’s Ghana? Indeed, Ken has been actively involved in self-devaluing exercises even before his public spar with Afia. Let us see: Ken, an impulsive caricature, for instance missed the point when not more than a year ago he called the NPP “bogus” and every member of the party a “fool” and an “idiot” on national television.

How do we unravel Ken’s intellectual and emotional dislocation? We are not too sure which political party he belongs to, if he could characterize the NPP as a “bogus” political party. Again, no wonder Afia called him an “idiot.” Did Ken not call himself an “idiot” before Afia did? Did Ken not call Akufo-Addo, John Kufuor, party elders, and every other member of the party a “fool”? Is Ken a “fool” by his own definition? If so, why then are some angry at Afia for bringing attention to what Ken has called himself and every member of the party, including Akufo-Addo and the other leading members of the party?

Could it therefore be that he is neither morally culpable nor politically accountable because our understanding of his insults is an implied outcome of his defenseless defense of Yaw Osafo-Marfo’s political ethnocentrism? Well, Ken’s foot-in-mouth syndrome is his own undoing. How can he threaten to chase Afia out of Ghana, for instance? Is that brash motormouth a rabid dog? Is Ghana his? And if indeed he had appealed to the Despite Group of Companies to retain Afia, then he has better treat himself to soul-searching, for this is what genuine, responsible, intelligent, and conscionable men do after they realize their follies and publicly childish exuberance.

What is more, the outrageous idea by him that some politicians were using Afia as a useful idiot is as anachronistically stupid and philosophically thoughtless as it is intellectually bizarre and morally bankrupt! The question we should all ask is: Which politicians were using him as a useful idiot, if not himself? Why can he stand alone but Afia cannot? There could therefore be gender bias in Ken’s masculine posturing. Afia’s outspokenness may have unnerved him and as well eviscerated his testosterone-boosting public posturing.

More so, Afia is a mature and confident woman and has every right to vent her displeasure the same way Ken does. We equally believe she understands the intricate language of political diplomacy, gender politics and what James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, called “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” What a world called Ghana! Then again it is not so much Ken begging the Despite Group of Companies to retain her in her job as for him to dishonorably engage a woman in public in that disgraceful and irresponsible manner.

Then, it is in this context that we suggest to Ghanaians to seriously consider making parliamentarians submit to a battery of psychological tests before being permitted to join the body of legislators after having been cleared. We are compelled to conclude that either one of these cantankerous public prostitutes is mentally unbalanced and thus should be taken out of that insane asylum called Ghana, and then shackled to the fecal gutter of public pariahdom. In fact, that is exactly where the bed-wetting and philandering exposed genitals of their endarkened gingivitis-mouths belong. Then we can allow the rest of the story to submit to the discretion of public patronage and sentiment.

That said, it is not a question that the power and conscience of narratology lies squarely in the hands of the public. After all, it is society that grants and bestows goodwill on individual personalities and as well patronizes their brands and, if we may also add, it is that same society that has the power of conscience to usurp that goodwill and bastardize those cherished brands! Unfortunately, Ghanaians do not realize that they can exercise their collective power by way of teaching their wayward public figures corrective and useful lessons. There is no doubt that the power of recall belongs in the people’s hands.

Alas, partisan politics, ethnocentrism, mass illiteracy and poverty, corruption, anomie, and bystander apathy have rendered that power of recall wholly ineffective.

CONCLUSION

Both Ken and Afia should turn over a new leaf. And both should dedicate their time to sanitizing the airwaves. Otherwise, let them live in their mad glass houses and continue to throw fecal stones and mud at themselves and the public even when Peter Tosh’s “Glass House” had already told them not to do so. Well, the public can and should forgive them if they genuinely regret their crass actions and if they agree to commit to the civilizational doctrine of public diplomacy and self-respect. To err is human, they say, but to forgive is divine.

Perhaps Bob Marley’s “One Love” and Culture’s “Peace, Love & Harmony” will do the trick.

Reference

Ghanaweb (Entertainment News). “Afia Schwarzenegger Fires More At Kennedy Agyapong.” Sourced from Peacefmonline.com. February 6, 2016.

Isaac Yeboah. “NMC Damns Ken Agyapong, Afia Schwarzenegger.” Graphic Online. February 10, 2016.

Katakyie K. O. Agyemang. “Are We ‘Fools & Fools’ NPP Members.” Modernghana. March 22, 2015.

We shall return…